


sometimes close, other times far

by asolitarygrape



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Buckynat reference, Cardiophilia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, PTSD, Pining, all the pining, everyone pining, heart swap game, it was gonna be smut and ended up being cute and fluffy, pre and post tfa, pre and post ws, pre civil war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 07:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6275035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asolitarygrape/pseuds/asolitarygrape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky insisted, "You got my heart, n'I got yours now. So you're not gonna get sick anymore, hear?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

1.  
Steve had been sad all day.

He knew that he was supposed to feel relieved, or even sore, but he was instead crushingly sad.

Sarah had peeked her head into his hospital room each time she made rounds on her shift. She'd tussled his hair, told him not to worry so much. She told him God was looking out for him, that Death and the Rogers' family had made friends a long time ago. 

But each reassurance after the surgery just reminded Steve of how close he had come.

The ugly stitches under his bandage pulled at him, there was a smell he could only describe as 'yellowed'. Steve had been thinking of himself more and more as Frankenstein's monster. Cross stitched and half human, made of parts instead of whole.

The 1931 film hadn't come out yet. Steve was not quite 11 years old and already on his fifth surgery.

He had missed another two weeks of school. He had missed another two weeks of being able to play outside. He had missed another two weeks of sunshine, and stickball, and having other kids to talk to. He even missed having other kids to beat him up. 

And he would likely miss another six weeks. Six more weeks of doctor's appointments and check ups and getting stitches removed.

A head peeked behind the curtain. Steve did not bother to look. He pretended to be asleep. He didn't need another lecture on how 'normal' he was.

"Don't be like that!" Bucky whispered. "I went through a lot of trouble."

"Buck!" Steve sat up. "You can't be here!"

"An why not?" Bucky pulled the curtain shut behind him, for privacy obviously.

Steve didn't have a good answer for this. He knew that there was one. Something adults and doctors agreed on. But Bucky was already pulling himself to sit on the hospital bed. He kicked out his feet, looking around the curtained rectangle Steve was confined in.

Steve didn't notice much about Bucky, yet. He didn't think much about the lines of his friend's neck, craned to look around the curtain. Or the way his hands were already too rough, calloused and rounded. Steve didn't notice Bucky had been bitting his fingernails, that there was dried blood on his index finger, that his clothes seemed musty. That the plane of Bucky's chest was hardening, his arms becoming more defined.

Bucky gave a toothy grin and said, "So what are you in for?"

Steve sighed, "I'm sick."

"Not anymore, you're not." Bucky pointed at Steve's bandages. 

Steve blushed and pulled his shirt shut. "Don't want to talk about it."

"That's some way to say thank you." Bucky harrumphed.

"Thank you for what?"

"Saving your life, punk." Bucky tilted his head. 

"What you mean?"

Bucky's face was drawn, but it only lasted a second. He grinned, "I had surgery too."

"No you didn't."

"Shut up, I'm talking." Bucky spat. "I had surgery too. Your ma told me you was sick, so I said to the doctor I wanted to trade your heart for mine. Since I'm bigger'n you anyway, figure I can handle bein a little sick."

"Buck," Steve rolled his eyes. 

The brunette's face was drawn again. But Steve didn't notice things like that about Bucky, yet. Bucky insisted, "You got my heart, n'I got yours now. So you're not gonna get sick anymore, hear?"

Steve pulled a face at him. Bucky elaborated, "If you get sick, you'll kill me. So I expect you to take care of it this time. No more of this bullshit."

Steve laughed, "Fine, Buck. Whatever you say."

For a few months Bucky kept the game going. Every time Steve wasn't at school, Bucky would sneak up the fire escape that night. He'd clutch his chest and ask, "What the hell happened? I passed out in math!" Steve would laugh and tell him his stupid heart wasn't any better than Steve's. 

After Steve had a bad asthma attack, Bucky sneaked into the room without saying anything. He curled up in Steve's bed and cried. Steve started to actually wonder if the game was real.

But when Steve was in the hospital next, Bucky stopped mentioning it at all.

 

2.  
Mary Katherine Haggerty pulled Steve into the girl's restroom at the diner.

She was giggling, with Steve trying to shush her. Mary pulled him into the stall and knocked his head back against the tiles. He laughed at the stinging. The room was spinning anyway, it wasn't going to get worse.

Mary tasted like coffeeberries and maybe some of the whiskey Bucky had sneaked into the movies in a flask. If she did taste like whiskey, Steve barely noticed. His head was already foggy.

Bucky and Maggie Shannen had laughed at them, quietly cheered them on from their booth. Maggie kept insisting that Mary never drank, that it would go to her head, that they were in for a show. Bucky kept pushing the flask around, saying he liked shows.

Mary Haggerty's teeth clanked against Steve's as she pulled at his waistband. He made a sound in the back of his throat that he didn't recognize and shoved her against the stall door. Mary half-laughed, half groaned, lifting her skirt.

Steve growled, slamming his hips against her. She bit at his neck.

His heart throbbed at his ribs as he pulled at his own clothing, grabbing onto Mary's thigh. His eyes clenched shut as he moaned, knocking their teeth together again. Mary laughed, tugging him and guiding him in.

Steve exhaled and grinned and growled all at once. His heart skipped. He wondered if Bucky felt it.

Steve's eyes slammed open. Mary half moaned, "What's wrong?"

"I," Steve stammered, pulling away. 

Mary snarled, "What?"

"I need to go," Steve pulled his pants back up. "I...I'm sorry."

Steve bolted out of the diner. Bucky and Maggie made sounds of disapproval as he sprinted past their booth.

"Where are you going?" Bucky yelled.

Steve refused to go on any more double dates.

 

3.  
"Steve?" 32557038 asked.

"I thought you were dead."

"I thought you were smaller."

Smash. Bang. "Let's hear it for Captain America!"

Bucky huddled under a scratchy blanket in a medic tent. He had been shouting at them in German. Hadn't meant to, just sort of slipped. The nurse ran out, calling for help. Other nurses came in, but Bucky refused to let anyone touch him. He didn't need the army figuring out any of the things Zola had done. He didn't need any documentation for all of the times he had been cut, healed, cut, healed, cut. Just so he could be shipped off and have it all happen over again with different scientists.

Needles burned under his skin in balloons. He didn't want to see another needle. 

His skin should be a mess, track marks up veins that made his forearms hard to look at. Bucky wouldn't look at them. But he knew they were fine, no scars, no holes. Bucky wouldn't look at them.

His head felt thick, like it was under water all of the time. The dreams and the reality had been so fluid when he'd been tied down to the table. He was still tied down to that table. He had to be tied down to that table. Because Steve had come, and Steve was big and healthy and a dumbass running toward land mines instead of away from them. 

Well, Bucky admitted, maybe that last sounded real enough.

Steve peeked into the tent. Bucky didn't turn, looked down at his boots. He knew Steve was being sent in to question him. Made sense, he _had_ been shouting in German. He braced himself against the concerned looks and prodding words.

Instead Steve plopped onto the cot next to him. "I thought it was me."

"What?" Bucky choked.

"I thought it was the experiment. Waking up in the middle of the night, yelling. It hurt so damn much." Steve nudged Bucky's shoulder. "Should have figured it was your fault."

Steve laughed as if it was obvious. "It was you getting captured, jerk." 

Bucky kept squinting at him, pulling tighter on the itchy army blanket. He waited to wake up, for the next set of syringes in his arms, to get cut, to scream. Steve rolled his eyes and said, "You're the one who has my heart."

It slowly dawned on him. "You're a punk."

Steve scoffed. "I'm the victim here."

"I can't believe you remember that," Bucky laughed. 

"Think about it a lot, lately," Steve looked at his feet. "Makes me feel,"

Morita interrupted them. Steve never finished the sentence.

For the next few weeks Bucky slept in Steve's tent. Steve argued with the army that he was the only one to question Sgt. Barnes about Zola. Steve never asked. Every panic attack, or nightmare, Steve would hold onto Bucky until it ended. And if he made sure to keep Bucky close to his heart, they never mentioned it.

 

4.  
The radio cut out.

"Peg?" Steve asked. His voice cracked.

The white noise fizzled loudly back at him. He was sure she was crying somewhere. She would move on, he told himself. She would continue being Peggy Carter, and that was indomitable. Indomitable, and beautiful, and fierce.

The ice was growing larger: a wide, blank expanse of white. The plane's glass was creaking and crackling at the drop in temperature and altitude. The engines groaned, heavy, welcoming gravity.

For a brief second he thought about the General. The Senator. Steve Rogers had cost the army a lot of money, and now he was going to end the super soldier program permanently.

The cabin pressure lights went on. A series of alarms squawked at him to do something about their situation. 

Doesn't matter, he thought. My heart stopped weeks ago.

 

5.  
"You've been asleep, Cap."

Aliens? Sure, fuck it: aliens. 

Smash. Bang. "This isn't freedom, this is fear."

Steve visited the Smithsonian again. He had read files that SHIELD gave him on each of the Howling Commandos but somehow it seemed invasive. He got details that he didn't need. Psych evals, personal notes. Steve felt awkward googling his friends' names and didn't trust the computers. He knew SHIELD must be tapping his devices. Some poor bastard would be able to report just how many times Steve had searched 'Bucky Barnes'.

With the museum, Steve could be confident that no one was going to recognize him without stars or stripes. He drew grafitti in the bathrooms. The staff would wash it, grumbling, not appreciating it for a Steve Rogers original. He had heard those sold pretty well.

Sometimes he thought about going and pretending to be himself on Hollywood Boulevard...

Nat seemed to think hiding in plain sight was a skill. She would mention the different aspects of being a spy, of how being able to blend was exactly was soldiers needed to be taught. The lesson the United States hadn't learned from Russia.

But Steve thought of it as a symptom. Without the red, white, and blue Steve was invisible.

Because Steve was a ghost.

"I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited over two dozen assasinations in the last 50 years." Natasha told him.

"So he's a ghost story," Steve said.

 

6.  
Steve's heart did a terrible lurch in his chest.

Don't heart attacks start in your arm? What was this agonal spasm? Steve hadn't felt this wrenching gasp tear through himself since Erksine's formulas had permanently rewritten his genetic code.

It did end. His breathing returned to normal. As he stared at the cement, hearing Rumlow tell another member of the team: 'Not here', Steve's mind went entirely blank.

That face should not be a knife in his heart. That face that had seen a thousand toothy smiles, red runny noses, split chapped lips. That face that he'd woken up next to every day of the war, that made him feel home when he was forty miles in enemy territory. That he learned to study in secret, that he sketched and held to his chest, and tore up before anyone else had seen it. That face that had complete control over his impulsive, reckless, sacrificial-lamb tendencies. That he had watched harden and age and only grow more handsome. 

That face did not make his ribs shatter like glass, stabbing into any soft meat Steve had.

Steve completely missed being loaded onto the van. He completely ignored that it is his fault Sam is captured, that Natasha is bleeding. His heart raged over any other sound and pounded into oblivion as the heat built behind Steve's eyes. Sam was talking to him, and Steve heard himself answering, but his voice sounded different. He didn't recognize what he said.

Maria Hill popped out like a Jack in the box and Steve didn't react.

Some time passed. The pang didn't leave. The flood of memories, of possibilities. And the quiet voice in Steve's head that whispered: of course he's not dead. You have his heart.

You woke up because you're too dumb to know when you're dead. And he woke up because he follows you. Or you follow him. Or however you get there, you're at the gates of hell together.

Steve couldn't bring himself to look Natasha in the eye. He still hadn't apologized for not helping, for not reacting. She doesn't hold it against him, but she and Sam agree there is something off about Steve's behavior.

He refused to help SHIELD free itself of Hydra. He told Fury he's going to tear it apart.

Just like he refused to bring in the Howling Commandos. He told Peggy he wasn't going to rest until all of Hydra was killed or captured.

Sam makes a final plea, "I don't think he's the kind you save..."

Steve can't believe that. His heart is beating, he feels it. For the first time in seventy years he doesn't feel like he's just shuffling from one moment to the next.

He broke into the Smithsonian. 

 

7.

"On your left." Steve woke in the hospital.

Once again, he was not dead.

Crazed murder bots? Sure, fuck it: crazed murder bots.

Stark didn't get it. Stark kept talking about going home. Stark kept challenging Steve about his vision, about where home was, about what Steve was going to do next. If Steve could live without a war. If Steve could live without SHIELD. Even when he didn' t know he asked those questions, Stark asked those questions.

And what was Steve supposed to say? That he wasn't whole? That he didn't know if he could be.

Smash. Bang. Natasha mentioned something about dying. When they were standing there, looking down from the now-floating city. Steve thought about admitting this mission wasn't his first suicide attempt. He started to think it wasn't hers either. Natasha understood not being whole.

"Where else am I going to get a view like this?"

After Sokovia, there'd been a lot of dead leads. Steve checked them all anyway. Bucky wasn't under any of the rocks he turned over.

Steve banged his head on walls and put stress on friendships.

He had his sketchpad out. The book was filled with about thirty drawings of Bucky. Steve did them from memory. He wanted to capture not what Bucky looked like, but who he was to Steve. None of the pictures accomplished it. Several of them had angry black exes crossed over them. 

How was he supposed to explain that home was the act of drawing? Lying across on his own, ratty tweed chair with a crate holding up the side where the leg had broken off. With Bucky collapsed in bed, either drunk or just dead tired from whatever job he's been able to find that morning. That home was long eyelashes and dark curls, square hands tucked behind his head.

"He's your warbound." Natasha pointed at him with her coffee cup. Steve rolled his eyes as he exed through another sketch. This time it was too good. Made him feel something he wasn't ready for.

"There was a program the Red Room had in the 60s and 70s they used to tell us about," Natasha raised her eyebrows, trying to express seriousness. "They would pair two agents that worked well together. They'd train together, plan missions together, carry out assasinations, stings... It was the only person outside of the bosses who knew your kill switch. The idea was that even if you resented your masters at the Red Room, here was a person you actively relied on to stay alive who you could actually trust with your life."

Steve closed the sketchbook and shoved it back into his bag. Natasha had begun the conversation by saying, 'nice purse'.

Natasha continued, "It was someone to be loyal to, something physical instead of getting lost in all the ideals and bullshit."

"And what happened to the program?" Steve grunted, poking at his own coffee.

Natasha cleared her throat, "What always happens when you're allowed to care about something else more than the mission. People lost focus on the Red Room, on the cause."

"I feel like that's an evasive way of saying they all were tortured and died horribly." Steve pointed out. 

Natasha shrugged. "Well, yeah."


	2. Chapter 2

1.  
Bucky pulled his way up the fire escape. His hands were too tired. His arms felt suddenly weak. It was the first time he'd ever wanted to go home after school. The first time his stomach knotted at the idea of going over to the Rogers'. 

His father liked to say things like that Steve was dying. That Steve wasn't gonna be much of a man anyway. That Bucky ought to look at getting a summer job. That Sarah Rogers sure knew how to waste money.

Ever since his mother had died, Bucky had avoided going home whenever possible. Rebecca had gotten shipped off to live with an aunt because George didn't know how to take care of something that small. Bucky stayed, George said, so someone could make a man of him. 

George Barnes had a succession of girlfriends following him back from the army base and Bucky was the only one there to make them breakfast and apologize most mornings.

Some man.

Bucky pulled himself up into Steve's window and peered at the little boy, piled with blankets and huddled under a stack of pillows and quilts. Bucky wasn't certain how he was going to swallow down the feeling that George might be right. That Steve was going to die and that would be the end of Bucky.

Bucky managed to get past the window without waking him. He curled up on the bed next to Steve, trying not to jostle him. 

The blonde was too fragile, too fair and delicate to be made from the same material as other humans. His eyelashes were too long and soft and curled over skin that was too white, too bright. Even in the darkening day, since everyone knows the sun sets at 4pm in Brooklyn autumns, Steve glowed. Each feature placed there by an angel with tweezers and a magnifying glass. 

Steve might not have noticed things about Bucky, but Bucky always noticed things about Steve. Always noticed the way his breath hitched or his hands clenched or his voice cracked. Contours of skin, the pulse in his throat. That Steve's hands were so thin Bucky could watch the bones move inside them when Steve drew. Bucky couldn't be without that.

It began as a slow breath, a gentle plea for Steve to wake up and say something snarky. But the idea that Steve would look like this, like he was sleeping...Bucky was too afraid to nudge him, touch that shoulder, listen for breathing, in case any of it wasn't there. In case the world began to crumble.

When he'd found his mom it had been like that. Been optimistic, been pouncing into her bed and asking why she hadn't gotten up yet, been sweet and childlike and loud. 

The rattle in his chest built and shook him until Bucky sobbed.

Steve woke up. Steve asked Bucky if he was okay. Steve tried to understand what was happening. But the brunette curled in on himself and said nothing. 

 

2.  
Steve bolted out of the diner, despite Bucky and Maggie protesting. He was red faced, didn't say a word, just rushed past their table. The bell on the door clanked louder and longer than anyone in the diner was comfortable with.

Bucky eventually lowered his haunches. Maggie had already rushed into the restroom to see what had happened. Mary was crying, they could hear it through the wall. In a moment the whole diner could hear Maggie chanting at her to 'stop that, get up'.

He thought he might kill Steve when he got home. Bucky grinded his teeth, looked between the other customers in the tiny, metal tube. He grimaced at them, issuing the challenge for anyone to make a comment. There were two dock workers, both cowed. The waitress, the old woman sitting with a cup of coffee, both looked down. Bucky reached into his pocket, slammed down some bills without counting them.

The brunette went into the girl's restroom himself. His voice dripping honey, "Come on, ladies."

He gave his best smile, grabbed onto Mary's hands and pulled her up from where she sat on the toilet, sobbing. Bucky gave her a twirl, pulled her in tight, "Come on sweetheart, don't be like that."

Mary sniffled. Bucky chuckled, a deep sound coming somewhere out of his ribs, "Doll, come on."

Bucky pulled Mary in tighter, pressed against her, whispered something into her hair. Maggie strained to hear. Mary laughed awkwardly between sobs. He pulled back to brush their noses together, "Let's go."

"They," Mary protested, hiccuping, "I look...it looks like..."

Maggie curled up behind Mary, locking her arms around the girl's waist. Her hands purposely grazed Bucky. "No one is gonna say anything, are they Buck?"

Bucky chuckled again, sliding a hand off of one girl and around both. He swayed them like they were dancing.

"I look like a whore," Mary hiccuped.

"So you're gonna live in here?" Maggie shook her head, looking devilishly at Bucky.

Bucky cooed, "I can think of much better places to go."

Mary sniffled, patted her free hand on her hair to flatten it down. "How do I look?"

"Perfect," Bucky breathed.

When he woke up the next morning, Bucky blinked at an unfamiliar ceiling. His arm was weighed down, curled around something naked and light. He knew it was naked, because it was very much wrapped around his leg. And warm and wet in the right places. He turned his head to the other side where another something, also naked and light, had her back to him.

"Oh," Bucky said. " _Shit._ "

 

3.  
His body is different, Steve's is. Bucky's is too but he tries not to think about it. He turns his focus back on Steve, as if it could ever leave him.

His heart swells and the dream he waits to shatter continues. It's precarious, a cloud hanging by spider silk. A strong wind could rip through his reality like candy floss. He breathes in skin like carnations and cloves, still impossibly pale. But milky, no longer sallow. His Steve, he thinks. _His._

And Steve's hands are still long and thin and mechanical. And his heart is still too big and dumb and quakes when he's scared. Bucky wakes each morning pulled to that heart by no longer lanky, spindly arms. He sometimes wakes up already in that embrace, being soothed. 

And Steve can say he's comforting his friend. And Steve can argue that Bucky has his share of problems. But it's clear that what the blonde thinks is that he can fit their pieces together again to become whole. That he can find his heart in Bucky if Bucky would only let them meet.

Bucky can't even remember having had the nightmare when Steve scoops him up, tip toes into his cot, cold feet sliding against his leg. And Bucky can't help but hiss and clench and curl away. And Steve is murmuring something, cautioning Bucky that he's not in Azzano, that there isn't anything bad happening, that Steve wouldn't let it.

He wants to tell Steve to back off, that he's fine, that there's no reason to treat him like a child. Steve's growth, his sudden appearance as a fiery angel summoned to his rescue, made the brunette only increasingly alienated. Increasingly suspicious that his reality was still on Zola's table.

Bucky doesn't say anything. He lets himself get comforted. Because Steve is crying and Bucky remembers what that was like.

The blonde turned Bucky around, and Bucky complied because it made Steve's body relax. Because he lapsed into Do What Steve Says. Because it made the quiet panic soften in both of their faces. Steve held him to his chest and continued his string of nonsense cheerleading phrases. Bucky heard none of them, drawn instead to the flow of blood. 

To the idea that Steve was safe, and healthy, and here, impossibly here. And Bucky thought that he ought to be crying, because this was his turn. He was the one on a table being cut open, he was the one everyone was convinced would die.

It was finally Steve's turn to face the panic that he was going to get left behind. Every time he argued with Bucky about enlisting, every time he tried to enlist himself, Steve would say that, about getting left behind. And Bucky would get angry. Because Steve had no idea how terrifying it was waiting outside of hospital rooms.

Steve had something to prove. But here it was, proven. And Bucky could smugly, snugly curl up onto Steve and think, _welcome to hell_.

 

4.  
"Captain Steven Grant Rogers and the United States Army." Was the answer Bucky typically gave.

Sometimes the word order got a little jumbled after they'd shocked him. But the doctor would ask again, "Who do you answer to?"

And Bucky would tell them. Repeatedly. About eighty times a day, most days. And yeah, sometimes it got jumbled. Sometimes he missed words completely. Sometimes he just spit blood at them. 

It took a couple weeks for the newspapers to reach the Red Room. They read him headlines. War atrocities. Concentration camp facts. When the war ended they even joked about giving him some champagne.

Throughout they cut him up. They were just as impressed as Zola had been. They didn't understand how he did it. They knew he must be something more than just an army grunt. They thought it was impossible that the united states army didn' t know it had a super soldier tucked in its numbers, hiding just to the left of Captain America.

That would be stupid.

When Steve's plane went down they told Bucky about it. He didn't believe them. He kept answering like he always did. They cut him up, he healed, they cut him up.

When they got ahold of a news reel, Bucky said it was fabricated. He kept answering like he always did.

When they got the footage of Peggy Carter describing Steve's death, Bucky hesitated.

Of course, that might have just been the torturing.

And in some dark corner of his head he thought, _no_. No, it couldn't be real. His heart's still beating, I have it.

 

5.  
It was important. He didn't know why. It wasn't that he didn't remember, there was nothing to remember, there was nothing there. His life was nothing, he was nothing. He had never been anyone.

The Red Room ran a program called Warbound partnering spies with assasins. The pair was meant to be able to act as handler to one another. To go into extreme invasive procedures and hold one another accountable. To engage in ways a single person would not be convincing, or a single person would not be safe.

It was 1967. He remembered that because it was New Year's Eve. His warbound had pinged him to a hotel room. When he arrived, the target had already been taken care of.

"I don't understand," He told her.

His Warbound stood in the suite's bathroom, reapplying lipstick. She barely reacted to his silent entrance or to the bloated body floating in the tub beside her. To the slit wrist hanging out of the water and dripping onto the tiles by her feet.

"I said I got you a Christmas present," She repeated, turning toward him. Her hair ruffled out, outdated fashion. She had made a note already to tell the doctors so that she could be updated before the next mission. 

The serum used to keep her young had been based off of the super soldier serum derived from the soldier's blood. She regularly needed updating. She wasn't perfect, like him.

"It's not Christmas,"

"Close enough," She shrugged, tip toeing around the puddle. She pulled a file from her field bag. Her face glowed, "Open it,"

He hesitated, but only because of how pleased she seemed with herself. That typically meant very bad things for him. The soldier flitted through forty pages of redacted material, his eyes scanning from black line to black line. He grimaced at her.

"Here," She snagged the file, sat on the bed and spread out the pages. He liked the way she crossed her legs. Wasn't sure why. Always had.

They had a special relationship. They were Warbound. If the Red Room discovered just how seriously they took that, the program would be disbanded. They would be separated. It was inevitable. They agreed on that. Since the first time he had refused to kill her after she scrubbed a mission. Because the nature of the mission she'd scrubbed. Because of the things he had to do to help her hide it. 

He slumped onto the bed next to her, looking at the fanned papers. She lifted one where the markings were only partially obsured. "James B."

She gave a feline smile, "Merry Christmas, James."

The solider thought about it for thirty seconds, reading the name over and over. "We need to burn these."

 

6.  
In the 80s, the soldier and his warbound were caught.

If he'd known the exact nature of what was going to happen, he might have killed her in 1962 to save the heartache. He didn't remember the details of it. Just knew they'd both be happier dead.

Hydra was different from the Red Room. They didn't call him a soldier, they called him an asset. They didn't act like they were training for the future, for honor or country. Hydra was a mad dash into oblivion.

He had trouble adjusting. So they wiped him. When he began to show personality, they wiped him. When he seemed to recognize something, they wiped him. When he spoke out of line, they wiped him. Until every time he returned from a mission, they wiped him. If he had remembered to, he might have missed the Red Room.

He escaped once in the 90s. Didn't know who or where he was. Just knew he needed to get to Brooklyn to make sure Steve had gotten his letter from basic. When the team caught him he'd cried. He pleaded with them. He asked to put flowers on his mother's grave. Told them she'd just died. That he'd found her in bed. Asked them if they knew where his sister was.

They wiped him and put him on ice. Didn't let him do missions stateside for a while.

He was more obedient than ever. Many backs were clapped, agents toasted. The doctors mentioned that he was physically less stable. That maybe the Russian method of pairing him with someone would be better than constantly freeze-drying his brain. 

"But I knew him."

The scientists were frankly surprised. The asset shouldn't have been able to know anything.

 

7\.   
Steve was sitting outside at a cafe with a sketchpad and a mug and a red head.

Barnes recognized the red head as a problem. He may have shot her a few times. People he shot rarely survived. That was the first warning sign.

When the blonde stood and nodded, turned and walked down the street, a memory rose through the murky surface. Letting the woman get the bill, how modern. Or, Steve was just running out on another cute girl trying to get his attention. Not much changes with Steve Rogers. 

Barnes stalked after him.

Steve might have suspected he had a tail. Or he just had a fucked up way of walking home.

Steve zigzagged through a park, lingered in front of store fronts that he did not enter, said hello to four separate dogs. Steve haunted the window of an art supply shop, practically fogging the glass with his lechery.

Barnes had to get more creative with how he maintained pursuit. He was an open tail. All Steve would have to do was turn and look at him. And Barnes was actively festering because he didn't know if he wanted that to happen.

It was a constant push and pull, reliable as the flow of blood rushing in his ears as he moved a step forward and an immediate step back when Steve hesitated on something. When the moment might happen. 

There was a tug in his chest to just go up to Steve. To resume where they'd left off, to act as if nothing odd or supernatural had happened---that's the Steve Rogers he remembered. The malignant optimism of never facing reality and instead diving head first into science fiction. Amnesiac cyborg best friend? Sure, fuck it: Amnesiac cyborg best friend.

Bucky hadn't been built like that. Bucky was always here and now and room spinning intensity. 

Barnes wasn't sure who he was.

Steve turned, Barnes wasn't there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumble down the tumblehole](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com) Watch me screech incomprehensibly.


	3. Chapter 3

1.  
Barnes was remembering more things about being Bucky.

The smell of a brown bar of soap. Tears dewed on eyelashes. Fingers splayed on a blanket, digging into a mattress. Toes curling, girls' hair pins falling out. Boys with guns and glasses and drinks. The stink of a corpse caught on the barbed wire, the laughter five feet from it as children hurled rocks.

But other things, too. Things that were uncomfortable to admit, that make him feel strangely.

Farther back than most things he remembered. A life remembered in fragments, this was sharp. Asthma attacks, and gasps, and aortic spasms, and crying. Asking Steve why he was missing school. Showing up in the window to play, getting called Peter Pan, and grinning just as eeriely. I never will grow up, his voice declaring it as he eyed his shadow. 

"To die will be an awfully big adventure," but neither of them had ever processed dying, had ever thought about the possibility. Or maybe Bucky just assumed neither of them had thought of it, because he hadn't thought of it. Because it hadn't been made real, wasn't concrete. Not before Steve ended up in the hospital. And oh, he'd asked his mother. And Winnie had said some people are delicate, and delicate things can break easily. Strong things can have weak packaging.

And he had argued against it until she took his hand and cupped it to his chest, to feel the flutter beneath his ribs-- frantic and fast and thrumming like a hummingbird's wings. Being told this was supposed to somehow comfort him? That he could be strong, that he didn't have a weak cell in him. The warmth in his chest at her affection somehow twisting into an ache. And why shouldn't Steve? What could possibly be so great about James Buchanan Barnes other than structural integrity? And Bucky resolved he would reverse their fortunes, he'd find some way to hurt for Steve, because Steve didn't deserve to hurt.

Was that what she had been saying? He doubted it now, he was steadfast then. And he'd told his mother Steve wouldn't ever die. And he sneaked into the hospital to tell Steve himself.

And thinking about it made Barnes cringe. Made his chest ache in a way he couldn't explain. Such that he'd press on his sternum and grit his teeth and try not to feel so desperately _vulnerable_. Exposed.

Because at twelve years old he'd had more sense than any other time in his life. Maybe he always had the same amount of sense but his body had just gotten bigger around it...

Because he told Steve that Steve had his heart, and he did, and Bucky had spent all the time since angry about it. Angry at how much more helpless he felt. 

Steve didn't say things, he showed them. He curled around Bucky in bed, drew pictures, dove out of the side of a running train...All while Bucky ached, and thought about it, and did nothing. Said nothing. Just implied. Referenced. 

And when Steve would tip toe into his bunk, would pull him into his chest, Bucky would miserably think that he was visiting a part of himself he'd given up. It made heat build behind his eyes and discomfort rise up his throat. Every vulnerable throb at his chest echoing through his skull.

They weren't friends, Barnes decided briskly. Their identities were too wrapped up in each other to be something that simple. There wasn't any word he found for it. There was no other instance of it in all mankind. Someone you could love like that. For this long, under these conditions.

"I'm not going to reduce myself to stalking you," Barnes told the burner phone. He hadn't dialed the number yet, he was just letting the phone know.

He rolled his eyes, " _Fuck._

 

2.  
Steve was buried in a pillow so assuredly that he hadn't decided if he should smother himself or buy it drinks.

His cell phone buzzed on the coffee table near his head, but he hadn't commited to the idea of acknowledging another of Fury's totally-not-SHIELD missions. Natasha would handle it. Steve was certain Fury would have called her first. If it was important, Natasha would be in his quarters already briefing him. 

Whatever bond he had to her, he smiled into the pillow, it was something stars are made of. She was a strange incarnation of Bucky. A disciple of sorts, seeings as Bucky had (in Steve's head) become patron saint of snarky heartache.

Steve wanted to be able to tuck her away and make her feel safe and thank her. But she would have given him a dark look and probably shot his head off for suggesting a hug.

Which was refreshing.

The phone buzzed again.

Steve lifted his head out of the pillow, he simultaneously named it Julissa, and reached for the phone. Sam must have just landed back in DC.

There was a text. The ID only read (---)--------. It had vibrated a second time as a reminder.

The text said, "Can't Sleep."

Steve winced at this. Had Nat gone on a mission and not told him? He pushed himself up on his elbows.

"Burner phone?" Steve asked.

"Always." The number answered.

"Gotcha." Steve shot back. "Reason I didn't get briefed?"

"I don't tell you everything." It retorted.

"Well I knew that." Steve sighed and looked over at the grey crackle of static on the television. He reached for the remote to turn it off. The room cast into blackness except for the phone illuminating his face. He considered getting up properly to turn on a light, but figured Nat wouldn't mind if he fell asleep mid text. She hadn't before.

"What are you doing?" It asked.

Steve looked blearily around the room. "Sleeping?"

"You sleep text?"

"I can do two things." Steve harrumphed. 

There was a knock on the door. Steve groaned and put his face back into the pillow (Julissa). He smacked his phone onto the coffee table as he pushed himself up. He stumbled to the door and creaked it open.

"Hey," Natasha barged in, slamming the door the rest of the way and flicking on a light to boot. Steve dramatically threw his arms over his face, groaning. "Can't sleep." She added, plopping onto his couch.

"So I hear," Steve mumbled. He meandered back to sit with her. Steve wedged his pillow (Julissa) out from under her and hugged the pillow (Julissa) to his chest as Nat began flipping through channels. 

"You think any thai places deliver this late?" 

"To an Avenger's compound in the middle of the woods?" Steve looked up at the ceiling. "Kinda doubt it."

The phone buzzed. Steve picked it up, groaning.

"So talented." It said.

Steve shot back, "Yeah, I am. There's an exhibit."

Steve tossed the phone and cuddled up onto the couch, half asleep. Nat smirked, "Who you talking to?"

Steve blearily looked at her, then the phone. Then back at Nat. Then at the phone.

Steve recovered in a slow, not at all clever fashion. "Shaaaron."

Natasha raised her eyebrows, "At 3am? Shit. You didn't say anything was going on."

"It's not. There's nothing going on." Steve asserted. "Time zone difference. No big deal. Nothing is happening. Do not bring this up again." 

Natasha laughed at him.

Steve ducked into the bathroom with the phone. "What are you doing?" He asked.

There was a few minutes before the response. "Nothing."

Steve stared at the font as if the black-on-white lines of the word were a cage keeping meaning at bay. "Nothing" it said. Steve cleared his throat, though he didn't know what this did for texting, "Do you want to do something?"

"Can't." It said. Steve wasn't going to press it but a second text came, "Not nearby anyway."

"Not a problem for me to come to you." Steve said.

 

3.  
There hadn't been a response. Steve kept his phone unusually tight to his skin, slept with it on his chest, spent four days trying to decide if all the texts he began were worth sending.

Each time the phone vibrated his heart went into his throat. He couldn't open his mouth, tight lipped, in case it hopped out past his soft palet. And each time the text or call had an identified number, Steve deflated. His heart became a wretched thing, recoiling back into his chest cavity, shriveled. Each beat an annoying reminder that it wasn't his heart at all. It was on loan.

Sam was getting irritated with him. Steve had doubled down on efforts to find Bucky, ignored mission statements, stopped reading dossiers. Pressed Sam to help. Natasha already made it known that he was acting like a child.

On the fifth day Steve got a text. "Can't sleep."

"Sounds like a personal problem" Steve shot back. He was in the middle of a conference. Natasha had eyed him darkly when he'd refused to turn the phone off. She said it would be insulting to the senator if it went off. Steve put it on vibrate, kept it tight against his belly, hidden in his lap.

When Steve looked up from texting back, Natasha was glaring at him. Luckily the senator's back was turned as he changed slides on his presentation. 

Steve excused himself, said something emergent had come up. Natasha turned nearly as red as her hair. The senator made an annoyed comment. Steve was already on his feet, unfazed by either of them.

He hid by the bathrooms, huddled where he thought no one would notice him. He pulled the phone up to his face, his finger tips numb from the vibration. From the expectation.

"is." Was all he got. Steve huffed, chiding his lungs for squeezing, thinking that this was a very stupid thing to have an emotional reaction to. He hesitated, texted back, "Call me."

Three minutes passed. "Can't talk"

"Why not?" Steve shot off before he had time to second guess it. He was annoyed. He wondered if Bucky could read that.

Eight more minutes passed. Steve had turned on his notifications after the first night of texting. He could see the ellipsis lingering, each dot highlighting in regular intervals. The three punctuation marks burning into his eye sockets. 

"Can't."

That did not take eight minutes, Steve glowered. "You're the one who texted me."

No answer. No ellipsis. Steve's heart raged against his ribs, tried to break out and punch the phone. He swallowed hard, tried to blink back the feeling, but his head felt hot and foggy and the world around him thick. He considered ducking into the bathroom but really hated the idea of crying in public, privately, or otherwise.

 

4.  
Barnes had his arms curled around his head, knees drawn up. The phone sat between his feet. Its weight pressing on the softer flesh of his arches. His throat burned. He hadn't said anything to anyone for days, not out loud. It made no sense for the muscles in his neck to be rebelling against him, tightening and spasming. Tears were already scouring tracks down his cheeks, but he'd worked too hard to break down now.

He had about thirty answers to give for why he didn't want to hear Steve's voice.

Because the last time he'd heard it it triggered him so badly he hadn't recovered. Because just imagining what Steve might say made his head spin and his stomach hurt. Because his chest thrummed irregularly just seeing text. 

Another text came. Hours had passed. Barnes hadn't contacted anyone else, not with that phone. The beep gutted him. A terror ran up his spine in waves and tremors. He lifted the phone.

"Can't sleep."

Bucky trembled. His head felt hollow, there was something rattling inside of it. The churning sound was loud, oppressive. The tremor in his spine stayed in a fixed point, aortic spasm, painful stabbing in his back. He gasped, his lungs betraying him. Shaking hands and flashes of light in the corners of his eyes because, oh fuck I forgot to eat again.

He texted back, "Stop drinking all that shit coffee."

A minute passed. "I like it. makes my heart hurt."

"You like that?"

"Sometimes."

Barnes stared at it. Before he could gather his own retort Steve had already texted, "Do you feel it?"

He threw the phone. It clapped against the wall loudly, fell to the floor. Barnes' eyes widened, realized what he'd just done. Given his position away, possibly irritated his neighbor. More importantly, might have broken the phone. "Shit!" He scooped it up, carefully putting the back cover again in place. He held buttons down, cradled it to his chest, hummed "Turn on, turn on, turn on."

The phone made a discontent sound but flickered to life. The shattered screen guaranteeing its revenge by vowing to slice pads of fingers. Barnes exhaled. He texted back, "Explains a lot."

There was a two minute pause. Steve answered, "Sucks to be you. m'keeping it hostage."

Lingering, Barnes' head feeling slow. He swallowed hard, texted, "That's not fair."

"Then give me mine back."

His eyelids drooped, "m'not sure where I put it."

"Rude." Steve grunted. Barnes was sure of it. Steve sent, "Guess I keep yours then."

"Guess so," Barnes swallowed hard. His head was stuffed with cotton, his ears full of water, his throat burning and swimming and stinging. 

"How do I get it to stop hurting?" Steve texted followed by, "You never gave me the owner's manual."

Barnes chuckled, something low and deep creeping out of his lungs that didn't sound like him. Or maybe it did. "Look in a mirror."

"Well shit, that's not gonna do anything for me."

 

5.  
"Can't sleep," Steve said. 

Barnes smiled at the phone, scooped it up, texted back. "Get a noise machine."

"That's stupid, you're stupid."

"Then stop drinking a gallon of sugar water a day." Barnes went back to poking at his take out. He was in a new safe house, one of his older aliases that had enough dust on it no one was going to come looking for him. Steve had been texting him regularly, enough Barnes could tell where he was by what he was saying. 'Can't sleep' was home. 'I'm bored' was in transit. 'Nat hit me again' was mission briefing. 'I'm dying' was in a conference. 'Kill me' was public speaking.

Steve was still pursuing him, he knew. They never mentioned it. Steve seemed to respect that the most he was getting out of Barnes was a series of half-sincere texts. Any asking where he was, to talk, meant going dark.

"I'm trying to give you a heart attack."

"I have always thought that." Bucky had the chopsticks still hanging out of his mouth when he picked the phone up.

"It's a clever ruse to get you to come stop me."

Barnes smiled. Liked this, this was easy. Easier than having to see Steve, than having to feel Steve. He almost always felt Steve like a tumor spreading through his lungs, choking out some part of his self preservation and common sense to make him Do What Steve Says.

"Maybe when I'm done." Barnes shot back. It was the first he had mentioned doing anything, or being anywhere, or at any point being with Steve. He'd flinched, but he'd also already hit send.

"You trying to give *me* a heart attack?"

"Is it working?" Barnes stabbed at his noodles.

 

6.  
Barnes made it back into the safe house, knew he needed to scrub it. Kill the alias. But his head was too light, and he fell back onto that sofa he'd found in a dumpster, and he knew he was bleeding. Pulled at the fabric of the coat, groaning, his chest aching, those all-too-familiar lights flashing in the periphery. He found the bullet hole, pushed his fingers into it. He snarled, whimpered, seethed. 

The phone clanked onto the floor when the flak jacket got torn open. He glanced at it, lifted it up. 

"Hey, you sure you lost it?"

"I don't want it back I just need it safe."

"Please let me know it's safe."

It had been six hours of radio silence and he'd gotten three desperate texts. 

This was not their rote, safe conversation. But he was busy. Didn't have time to launch into feelings, needed to stay focused. He'd rushed. He hadn't been disciplining himself like he should have. 

Barnes put the phone on his sternum and stared at the ceiling. The phone weighed there, allowing itself to be lifted when he breathed. His fingers dug harder into the wound, feeling out the perimeters. 

He lifted the phone up, texted awkwardly one-handed, "You home?"

Steve's responce was almost immediate. "No. Overseas."

"what seas?"

There was a minute's hesitation. "you okay?"

Barnes thought about it, looked at the fingers curled inside of his wound, tucked into his rib cage. His lungs pushing back against the pressure, blood still sucking around his fingers and creating an angry seal. He texted back, "Relatively."

"You need help?"

Barnes thought about the white pulsing lights, chased them around the room. "Nah, I'm good."

"If you're lying to me I will do something stupid and dangerous."

"Noted."

Barnes put the phone back on his sternum, stared at the ceiling. Picked it back up, texted one handed. "can you talk?"

 

7.  
Neither of them said hello. Barnes knew he was technically supposed to when he answered the phone. But the words, any words, there hadn't been planned words, get caught up in his throat. And for a second he just listens to Steve breathe: quiet, afraid, the rush of adrenaline surging behing each hesitant sound.

"Where are you?"

"In a supply closet." And it's Steve's voice, quiet and low and soft and warm and infuriating. It does something to Barnes' brain, makes the world go gooey. His eyes mist up. The last time he'd heard it it had been pleading, defiant, insistent, so scared---scared by Steve's terms. Resolved and hopeful and indomitable. Steve asked, "Where are you?"

"Safe house," rushes out of him like a garden hose. A spigot is stabbed into his chest and draining him of everythng and--oh yeah. He jostles his fingers in the wound. Seal seems good.

"Are," Steve hesitates. And his anxiety is in his voice, building layer upon layer as it calcifies his throat shut and stops the question. His heart is aching and whining and beating against the walls demanding a release and Steve shudders to stopper it up. And Barnes hears that, or thinks he can. And he begins to shake because he doesn't know what to say next.

"I got shot." Barnes surprises himself. "So I'm being honest. No need to do anything stupid or dangerous, yeah?"

Steve's breath wavers, falters. Barnes rushes to stop that sound again, rushes to cover the way he can hear Steve's wheels turning. "I don't need help, I'm fine. I can handle this. I just,"

That traitorous muscle in his chest in starting to taper off his speech and he's sure Steve can hear it. Hear it pounding back against every protest, demanding something Barnes is sure he doesn't want. And his eyes are no longer misty, they're wet. The hungry, tired, animalistic vibration up his spine finally breaking the last straw. And Steve is just there, just patient, eternally patient, and Barnes' voice cracks.

"Okay," Steve's voice is too liquid, too warm. He's sighing it, practically moaning. And Barnes' head threatens to split open. Because seventy years comes punching him in the face.

"Steve," Barnes' pleads and he immediately knows he stepped over a boundary. He hears it in the way Steve's breathing changes and his voice whimpers without making a sound. He knows Steve is crying, he can feel it echoing through his chest, the way his big dumb shoulders shake. He takes a breath, can't back out now, "I don't know if I can fix this."

"Tell me where you are." Voice is sharp, hard. He's not going to accept any more evasion or flirting. Tell him where you are, now, that is how you fix this. Or it stays broken.

"I, I don't," Barnes struggles. He looks around the ceiling to see if it has any sagely advice. "I don't think I should."

"Why not?"

"I don't think I can handle it." Barnes snaps. Wounded animal.

Steve is quiet for a few seconds. Barnes counts them. Counts the heartbeats angrily pulsing through his head. 

"Tell me where you are," He repeats it. There's no room for compromise. No alternative solutions. No willingness to bend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many notes deep can I [pimp my tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

1.  
Barnes refuses to move from the couch. Ratty couch. Very likely a literally ratty couch with some sort of nest inside of it. It smells like mothballs and the texture can only be described as coarse. Fabric, fur, human skin? Who knows. Definitely coarse, though.

He turns his body into it, trying to mask the bullet wound that has finally been plugged up long enough to start healing. Barnes pulls his finger out of it slowly with a visceral pop. He huddles in on himself, angry for giving up his coordinates. And he waits, because he was told to stay still, and because his head has officially become clouded by the principle of Do What Steve Says.

It takes eight hours before he hears the door pop in its frame. The lock he had modified becomes puddy, tines clicking into a delicate interplay. So much for global security, hacked again. He grumbles.

His stomach has jumped into his mouth because it doesn't think he can handle this either. It doesn't plan to go down with the ship.

He hears the first steps into the room, the door closing. The lock tinkered with. His heart protests, wants to escape with the stomach, the two fight for custody over his tongue. He squeezes his eyes against the onslaught of blood raging through him, crushing him internally. He imagines his veins inflating, throbbing, pushing back against all of his tissues until he is nothing but an exposed nerve.

He doesn't doubt that it's Steve. Hydra wouldn't have come through the front door. SHIELD, or any one of several governments that might be irritated with him, wouldn't have been so gentle. Steve padded through and Barnes knew those foot falls better than the blood torrenting in his ears.

And the blonde is there, Barnes can hear him, feel him moving in the room. He can feel his eyes on the conditions Barnes lives in, on his hair, his shoulders, his blood on the floor. Steve approaches him and Barnes flinches. He whimpers. His head is buried under layers of cake icing oozing out of his ears. He can't think, he can't be here right now.

"Buck," It's soft. It's startlingly soft. It's a marshmellow breath, hanging in the air like powdered sugar. Sticking on every surface and refuses to be brushed away. And Steve is leaning next to him on the couch, and his hand---mechanical, long,--ghosts over Barnes' shoulder but doesn't dare touch.

"I can't," Barnes sighs, but it's already done. His chest is heaving, and he's sure he'll be bleeding again, and the tremor that cracks through him makes him quake. He can't pull it in, can't make it stop. His body rattling on the couch, knowing Steve is so close. Knowing how badly he wants this and how incredibly he does not want this. And Steve is fairing no better, but Barnes can't see that now.

It's like before. He's waking up, already in that embrace, being soothed. And Steve is muttering nonsense phrases more to calm himself than Barnes, but Barnes is lost in it. 

The blonde turned Barnes around, and Barnes complied with it because it made the panic leave both of their faces. Because Steve was running his fingers on Barnes' wound, trying to assess something. Because that was clinical, and cold, and Steve liked to show and not say. And Barnes liked to avoid it all together, thanks, but Steve wouldn't let him, So Fuck It.

Steve was a trembling mess, even as he tried to play doctor. Tried to think of something more to do that shouldn't have already happened eight hours ago. Ten hours ago. Whenever this happened. And Steve looked at the hole and he felt it in his chest. He felt it biting into his rib. His blood dark and sticky and pooled in Bucky's clothes.

Steve chokes, "This is a mess,"

Barnes considers it, but says nothing. His eyes are raking over the blonde, attempting to capture every detail. Every breath. Every shudder that Steve tries to hide, that makes his face somehow lighter, hidden behind a pink tinge, and impossibly bright. He's not a fiery angel, he's a sun god. Barnes is sure he could see Steve with his eyes closed, burning through his eyelids. Like a cat basking in the sun.

"I love you," Barnes spasms. It wasn't what he meant to say, wasn't where that line of thought had been going. Steve is equally disarmed. He stammers a response. Before he embarasses himself, Barnes interrupts him. "I'm an idiot."

"You're a jerk," Steve corrects softly.

 

2.  
Barnes wakes alone the next morning in a different safe house, in a different city, most likely in a different country. He hasn't pieced together all of the shrapnel of the past day. Somewhere between blood loss and exhaustion, he lost what he worries are the most important hours of an annoyingly long life.

But a smell like fire, and charcol, and what might have once been maple wafts in from another room with a series of outdated curses, because Steve can't even boil _water_ and never could. And Barnes is suddenly elated, because it confirms one of his principles: that Steve Doesn't Change.

Like legs of a compass, Barnes always circling out on the perimeter, sometimes close, other times far. But Steve remains fixed, centered, unmoving. Because Barnes is a seven year old arguing with his mother on another principle of his: Steve Won't Ever Die.

And the soldier, or Barnes, or whoever the fuck he is decides to stay in bed. Because why defy Do What Steve Says?

 

3.  
The blonde peeks his head into the bedroom, pleased that he managed not to wake Bucky as yet. Given his failure at making a gesture, and the fact he'd never succeeded in one of those gestures and isn't sure why he thought it was a good idea this time..., Steve decided that his efforts are better spent elsewhere.

He tip toes in, feeling very much as if he is again sneaking into a bunk in a tent, with moisture rising up through the mud, but happy that it's cold, happy it's miserable and been raining ten days, because it's all the more excuse to check on Bucky. To disappear from briefings and the colonel and the commandoes. 

But this floor is cement and carpet. It gives like mud in places because of the dips in the cement's pour. And it's encased in walls, not canvas, but that's somehow immaterial because the walls are the same color at Steve's old flak jacket. There's no decorations, no need to pretend he's not pretending. Pretending Bucky hadn't called him last night, hadn't disappeared after DC, hadn't tried to kill Fury, hadn't died on the train.

Bucky doesn't turn away when Steve lifts the blanket, doesn't flinch or grumble. And that's new. Steve would have thought it would be worse. Unless Bucky's only pretending to be asleep. But Steve can pretend that away, too.

Because it's 1944, and there haven't been any aliens, or crazed murderbots, or cyborgs. At least none Steve knows about. And none of the really bad things, the things that make Steve's head ache and spin and make him curl up on the floor of the shower, have happened yet. Steve's just an idiot who joined the army by unusual means. And Bucky, he might have had some bad things happen, but that always seems to be the case with Bucky. Always some new, even worse tragedy. A human avalanche of bad luck. But Steve's okay with that, as okay as he can be, because he's with him in 1944. Because he can be useful then. 

The blonde curls up, makes himself a weight on that chest. Some part of him trying to turn to stone, to become a permanent reminder, to calcify into a part of Bucky so that he can't forget him again. And the weight of all of it hits Steve, not unlike a pile of bricks but maybe in a more damaging way. And the blonde can't help but whimper because it isn't pretend.

There's blood moving beneath his cheek, crashing and pumping through flesh that's under his hand, and warm and breathing, and air moving through lungs (though not the best, he did get shot. Fuck, he got shot. Did I forget that?) that are pushing back against Steve, so that he flows with him. And Steve worships him.

"Hey," It's a rumble. It's coarse and hard and a voice not heard before 1942 and even rougher after it. And Steve braces himself because of the wave it sends through his bones. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Steve whimpers, "Absolutely nothing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> four times. I can mention [my tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com) four times. because that is how many chapters there are.
> 
>  
> 
> I don't know what happened, you guys. I was gonna write porn without plot and then it was so cute I felt weird saying: and also! SMUUUUUUUUUT.  
> forgive me.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com), watch me scream about Bucky Barnes into the void


End file.
